All posts by ReasonablySober

So it’s been about a week since the last entry and while I’ve had things to write about, I run hot and cold. One minute I’m amped about something and the words can’t wait to come out. Five minutes later I’m off the ledge and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Last weekend I twice went out with friends. On Saturday night on the way home I was in a shitty mood and wanted to get it out on here. I got home, turned on a replay of the ball game, checked FB and lost interest.

It bugs me because I know that what I didn’t write is probably now gone.

Yesterday I needed find an old file on my machine I use for work. Searching through my docs (I’m a digital pack-rat. I saved everything I typed in college. I’ve got shit from high school and IMs from when ICQ was new. I still have the first mp3 I ever downloaded – Sneaker Pimps – 6Underground, well over a decade ago).

But I came upon blogs and entries from my time in Wausau. Until yesterday I hadn’t looked at what I’d written in over two years and I got a serious kick out of it. It wasn’t like a lot of it was anything special. Just day to day observations, interactions with people, my times with friends, romantic interests and thoughts on current events.

Nothing earth shattering.

But it was all stuff that had faded with time. Although only two years removed, some of the things that made me grateful for meeting the people I did over in Wausau were tough to recall. But reading the words I’d written back then brought it all back.

• I could remember Dave’s hilarious philosophy on infidelity.

• How thankful I was to own a cat when I had to take Frank’s dog for a walk the week he was out of town.

• Louie letting me in on the scandalous and sordid happenings going on in Internet Marketing and then dying of laughter once I was back at my desk.

• The embarrassment when Shannon told me how she almost ran me over when she saw me jogging home shirtless from Burk’s extremely early one morning (I still totally miss that Ataris’s tee).

• Haaaaavvvvvve you met Brian?”

• The exact way I felt when I knocked on Jess’s door, how nervous I was and being floored with the way she looked when she opened it.

The point is this: a picture isn’t worth a thousand words. At least not with the way I write.

You can take a million photos and they’re good to bring you a smile, but I can guarantee they won’t do your experiences justice. If you want to relive the times in your life you want to remember, write. Even if they seem like insignificant observations at the time, put them in a text document and save ’em. Months and years later you’ll read through them and they’ll unlock memories you’d long forgotten. You’ll laugh, cry, get pissed but most importantly you’ll remember.

1 – Since I’ve lived in the northern half of the state, namely Eau Claire and Menomonie, the Bucks have been blacked out because the NBA denotes the Wolves as the local team. It’s ridiculous. It’s not as if the Bucks are in the same league of popularity of Packers or Brewers up here, but there’s more Bucks fans than Wolves fans.

So every year I’d write the NBA and the Bucks and Charter and DirecTV and every year I’d get no where. Back in September, like I had in the past, I wrote my letters and emails and made the phone calls to the companies that made the decisions on the matter.

This week I got good news.

The Wolves granted the Bucks permission to broadcast games in Eau Claire. All that needed to happen was for DirecTV and other cable providers to carry them. It seemed like no big deal. DirecTV carries FSN-Wisconsin and if you buy the sports pack you get that channel.

As it happens to be, here was the press release I saw this afternoon:

FOX SPORTS WISCONSIN TO TELEVISE MILWAUKEE BUCKS
GAMES IN EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN DURING THE 2009-10 SEASON

The Milwaukee Bucks and FOX Sports Wisconsin are pleased to announce television coverage of Milwaukee Bucks games in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin television market for the 2009-10 NBA Season. FOX Sports Wisconsin coverage of Bucks games may be found on the following channels in the Eau Claire area: Charter Communications (digital only) – Channel 91; DirecTV – Channel 669; and DISH Network – currently no dedicated channel but typically between 444 and 450. Eau Claire area customers of other cable or satellite services should contact their providers for further details.

Fox Sports Wisconsin’s Bucks programming includes 70 home or road games telecast, all including the 2009 Emmy award winning Bucks Live pre- and post-game programming. Thirty-five games are telecast in high definition (HD), ten more than last season.

The complete 2009-10 Milwaukee Bucks FOX Sports Wisconsin telecast schedule may be found on Bucks.com. http://www/bucks/schedule/index.html.

I’m a little proud. It’s about five years late but it makes me feel like the phone calls to the Bucks PR department, the email correspondence with Bucks beat writers, the pissing and moaning I did with DirecTV wasn’t for nothing. Speaking of which…

2 – I should feel different, having worked technical phone support for a software company for a few weeks when I was done with school. But when your issue is with a company like DirecTV, I don’t care. If I’m gonna be dicked around I’ll feel free to blow up on the poor sap on the other line.

The Bucks had a game on FSN earlier in the week. I’d heard that the Bucks would finally be broadcasting up here so when I got the game I didn’t think much of it until I got a call from someone in EC saying they weren’t getting the game. I checked my DirecTV lineup and to my amazement I’d been charged $140 for NBA League Pass. I didn’t want it but because I’d puchased it last season they re-upped without alerting me. No phone call, no email, no notice in the mail.

I got right on the phone and demanded my money be refunded and League Pass be removed from my account. The Bucks were now broadcast in EC. What the hell use for LP would I have.

Even though the season just started and the free preview ended last week, some dick on the phone said that there was nothing that could be done. The deadline to cancel had been a couple days prior. So I flew off the handle and it’s a good thing I was outside. I was yelling into the phone and there wasn’t a four letter word I didn’t drop. My last words before hanging up were, “This is fucking bullshit and I’m calling the better business bureau motherfucker!”

If he were anything like me when I used to work phones he probably laughed when I hung up. I vented, yelled a lot, called him a name or two but what does he care?

Whatever.

15 minutes later I was still pissed to the point where I didn’t care to have DirecTV anymore. I called back and told the first person I got on the phone that because I was being charged for some shit I didn’t order I no longer wanted DTV service and I wanted it canceled.

Ten seconds later I was on the phone with a different woman. “Oh, I see you were charged for LP and you didn’t want it? Let me just get that off your account and get you a credit. Really sorry about that!”

Funny what happens when you threaten to take money out of their pockets.

3 – Speaking of the Bucks, our Young Buck has 17 points in the first quarter. This could be another big night for the twenty year old.

4 – The reason why I would have had no problem canceling our satellite TV service is for one reason: NinjaVideo.net

For over a year it the was best kept secret on the net. Every TV show and new release out there, updated daily, all in high quality Divx format. You could watch DVD quality rips of movies on your PC before they were even out in rental. Miss your favorite TV show? Check Ninjavideo. Can’t find season 2 of 24 or the complete series of Firefly in your local rental store? Go to Ninjavideo.

But then PC World named it as one of it’s top 100 products of 2009 and the site has rightfully blown up.

Their library is stupid-awesome and easy to access. You open up the applet, enter a code to prevent bots and restrict access, and in 60 seconds you’re watching whatever you want in DVD quality.

The best part? The Divx codec they use. If you right-click on your Divx player you’re able to change preferences for the player. One of the preferences is where the video is cached on your hard drive. Typically it’s at a setting of 556 megabytes and the file is automatically deleted when you want to watch something else. But if you want to start a library of content it’s incredibly easy. Create a new folder somewhere, set your player to save the video files in this location and change the cache size to something huge, like 40GB. When you click to start a new video in Ninjavideo’s player, the download starts. Click pause on the playback and forget about it. 10 minutes later the movie is on your hard drive. Change the extension to AVI and you’re free to do with it what you wish.

With TV episodes I like to convert them to m4v and watch them on my iPhone while I workout.

With movies I like to stream them to my TV in the living room using my network and a PS3.

With a computer, a high speed network and a Xbox 360 or PS3 you can have yourself your own little DVR setup without ever needing cable or satellite TV. Watch TV and movies on your time, no commercials. The only monthly payment is to your ISP.

If I wasn’t such a huge sports fan I’d be all over it :/

5 – The rest of the weekend should be dope. I took the day off to make the place spotless and do some needed work. Tonight I’m going out, tomorrow it’s golfing, place to myself.

7 – This week Brandon Jennings was on the cover of ESPN.com for a feature story, was mentioned on Pardon the Interuption and Around the Horn, interviewed nationally on the Jim Rome Show and again on the Scott Van Pelt Show.

This is a Milwaukee Buck we’re talking about here.

I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.

7b – At the half, 20 points on 8-10 shooting, 4 assists, no turnovers. The Bucks are missing three of their four best players and are still leading the healthy Bobcats by 10.

8 – OGTs

Update on Sunday. She looked cute as hell today.

9 – Cutting this one a little short. Maybe more when I get home. Hopefully not.

I love me a good list, so I went through my iTunes and picked out the country tunes I’d liked at one point or another. I came up with a list of 184. The vast majority were from the late 80s-early 90s. The stuff my folks played when I was younger and I grew up on. Then there’s a gap you get a handful of songs from the late 90s, stragglers that got through my wall of alt-rock. Include a band like the Dixie Chicks in this group. Then another big gap and you get to the poppish ‘country’ I started to like in the late 2000s. Ryan Adams, The Wreckers, Dustin Kensrue, Taylor Swift.

So from that list of 184 I decided I was gonna narrow it down to my top ten country tunes of all time. I made another list and went through the 184, taking any song I could conceivably see being near my Top 10. Well ho-ly-shit I wound up with 30 and they were all so awesome I decided that my top ten would be expanded by 20 tracks.

I did, however, rank ’em.

If you know anything about these tunes, you’ll probably notice a distinct theme…

• NFL Draft
• NBA Draft
• Opening Day for MLB
• Every NFL Sunday
• NBA Trade Deadline
• Opening day for Free Agency
• NFL Combine week
• Senior Bowl
• New Years Bowl Games
• NCAA Football’s National Championship Game
• Every day of the NCAA Tourney
• Sunday at the Masters, US Open, British Open, PGA
• Kentucky Derby or any of the other two provided there’s a shot a Triple Crown
• MLB Draft
• MLB Trade deadline
• Friday
• Christmas
• Thanksgiving
• Any holiday that gets me a day off
• Halloween
• Any Tuesday in which a good new movie arrives for rental
• Any Thursday with a new episode of Supernatural
• Men’s Final at the Open and Wimbledon
• Any day I get Ciciones Cajun pasta
• Any day I get to cook for someone

So I was balls deep into a blog about the last five days and it was going well. I’ll have it done tomorrow.

But I ran into a thread on PCs vs Macs and to my dying day I’ll defend the motherfuck out of my favorite little machines.

Here was what the instigator said:

its a trend to get a mac… i see so many people with them and all they use them for is word processing and surfing the internet. if you have the money, why not? but you can easily do that stuff with a PC for 1/2 the price.

My reply:

I’ve seen that excuse for ten years. That buying a mac is a trendy thing to do. At what point does it stop being a trend? As for the reason people wouldn’t go with a PC, I think most would prefer not having to worry about malware, spyware and viruses killing their machine.

His reply:

being a fashion statement is not an excuse, its just something ive simply observed. why spend an extra $1000 for a prettier screen if you’re going to be doing the same things. as for the malware, spyware and viruses, i’ve had a few problems on my pc with them, but it’s never anything i couldn’t fix. i take care of my computers… as for the general population, maybe they don’t.

every single future project moving forward will be intel base required. this includes the later versions of Xcode (which i primarily use for apps)… i know there are work arounds, but if you’ve ever done any app programming, you’d know certificate issues and approval from the apple store can be a real pain… having a tinkered with copy of xcode just complicates things tremendously more.

anyways my main point wasn’t to compare the older macs with the newer one, it was to simply state that macs are VERY expensive and to the average person, you can handle all your needs on a pc for half the price.

and another person jumped on…

Just look the price of any macbook… It’s a fashion statement.

And this is what killed my blog writing for tonight. This reply:

I’ve made similar posts here in the past, but I own two Macs and three PCs. Two still work as well as the day I bought them and the other three won’t boot. I can let you guess which work and which don’t.

So I ask you, what was the better investment?

Was it the Alienware laptop, the Dell laptop, the do-it-yourself PC that gave me a good six months before going to ****?

Or was it the two Macs that do everything I need and still do it as well as the day they were bought?

I’m not an idiot when it comes to computers. I worked three years as a PC repairman and computer technician while in college. In that time I must have taken a look at 120 PCs. I never looked at a single Mac. I also work as a web developer and have to do testing on a PC every day.

The bottom line is if you buy a Mac and don’t drop it you should have it for a decade or more. That’s without having to buy Norton or McAfee or download constant security patches or worry that the attachment you receive or the website you visit is going to destroy your computer.

You’re paying extra for the knowledge that your OS is light years better than what’s available on a PC, it’s more secure, more stable, less prone to depreciation and simply works more logically. But if Windows blows your skirt up, you can even dual boot.

To be honest I don’t know why the general public would waste their money on a PC. Gaming I guess? I don’t know about that.

I’m a geek. And it’s 1:42 am. Time to pop in an episode of something awesome and get in bed.

Frankly, it was a ticking time bomb and you don’t screw around with diplomacy or threat level dossiers with the Moon hanging over our heads. It’s been trying to gain our flank for a millennia but you never know when disaster could strike. It could happen at any time. Obama saw a threat and fired the first shot; lets see if the Moon bothers us ever again.

Also, you right wingers that thought the President was weak? screw countries, he took on an entire heavenly body.

2 – If you’re of the faint of heart, skip to number three. But on Sunday I made the most delicious sandwich…a grilled PB&J with BACON. The smokey, the sweet….yum.

2b – Then I went to the gym :/

3 – It’s weird how one person can make the same phrase repeat in your head every time you see or think about ’em. Every time I see the current OOMA or she finds her way into my thought process, all I can think is, “She’s so fucking cute”. Just those four words. Sometimes I even have to shake my head. She’s just sooo….fucking….cute.

4 – The mom continues to impress.

There I am in 4th place, and there she is in 2nd. She’s also dominating in the percentage correctly picked. 76.32 is tops in our league of 92 people.

I shudder to think what she’d do in Vegas.

5 – Party this weekend. It’s EC’s homecoming and Wausau homies are coming over for some shenanigans. I’m offering up a quick sorry to those that are certain to receive drunk texts.

6 – I’ve been on a serious West Wing kick lately and while I love the show, it’s also a little depressing. All of these politicians are idealized versions of what we all want to see in our representatives. They’re thoughtful, intelligent and driven to make our country a better place. I can’t say that about the people we elect in the real world. Obama was nice change from the brainless hack we had in there for the last eight years, but I’m gonna need to see some results soon. Health care would be a great start.

But seriously, wouldn’t you like to see someone that can give you chills? Someone that can inspire?

Wouldn’t you like to see someone like Texas congressman Matt Santos? Check out this speech (supposed to be one of concession at the National Democratic Convention but winds up being something totally different).

But trust me when I say this is the most fucked up shot chart I’ve ever seen.

It was from last night’s Bucks game. They’re gonna be so god damn bad this season.

The masochist in me can’t wait to see it.

8 – So Rush Limbaugh wants to buy an NFL team and the Players Union is outraged. Even the owner of the Colts came out against it.

“I, myself, couldn’t even consider voting for him,” Irsay said at today’s NFL owners meetings. “When there are comments that have been made that are inappropriate, incendiary and insensitive… our words do damage, and it’s something we don’t need.”

I agree(d).

Now……I’m not entirely sure.

I was listening to the radio and heard a take on it that made me reconsider. It was pointed out that almost 500 NFL players have been cited for serious offenses since 2000. Drug use, gun charges, drunk driving, battery, spousal abuse…you name it. Yet all these guys get second chances and now they’re the same people that are taking the moral high ground against Limbaugh.

I don’t mind it if someone wants to voice their opinion and I’m certainly no fan of Limbaugh, but I can’t stomach hypocrisy. So the Players Union won’t support Rush’s bid, but they’ll welcome felons into their league? The owners don’t want him in their brethren but they’ll sign a defensive end that killed a woman or a cornerback that paralyzed another man via gunshot?

It’s bullshit.

9 – I hate it when someone asks me to critique a design and I can’t offer up any suggestions. Ben asked me for my thoughts on a logo he put together and all I could say was, “I like it. Great job”.

But the fact is he’s the best graphic designer I’ve ever worked with and he does phenomenal stuff.

10 – This blog is running a little long, I know. But in my family, someone who uses one word to say something when they could have used ten just isn’t trying hard enough.

Early returns make me think they’re all winners. I’ll say more once I get through my 4th and 5th listens.

2 – I shouldn’t have even come to work today. I’ve been totally useless to SP. My accomplishments have been:

• Got the guest list in order for tonight

• Debated the Milwaukee Bucks at RealGM.com for a good two hours

• Picked up the latest AFI and TDG.

• Figured out what food I’d be providing later

• wrote most of this blog

3 – OGT’s.

At what point do you sort of start to feel guilty about who you’re dating? In high school it’d happen if you were a senior dating the super hot freshman or sophomore. In college it was calling your layup at bar-time and getting her out of your place before your boys woke up the next morning. Is there an equivalent now when you become a young professional?

3b – If this goes bad what’ll hurt most is probably the notion that I’ll have to get my coffee somewhere else in the morning.

3c – I should have thought this through long ago.

4 – Crash Love is the surprise of the year. Like I keep looking at the iPod to make sure I’m actually listening to AFI. It’s remarkable.

5 – My mom is funny. Year in and year out she straight dominates an NFL pick ’em pool myself, her and about 120 other family and friends are in. She might win $600 over the course of a year.

So when I got a phone call at 9:30 last night I knew it was gonna be her. I had just nailed 14/15 games on the day, only losing my lowest pick. I was in 4th place on the week and depending on tonight’s game I could either be 2nd or 4th on the week.

If the Vikes win I’m in the money.
If the Pack wins I’m happy as shit for the week and likely longer.

6 – Another question was posed this weekend. What do you think is better: a great TV show or a great movie.

I didn’t even think it was a question. Great TV easily.

Look, I love Casablanca. But if it’s Bogie for 90 minutes or President Josiah Bartlett for 100 hours, I’m going with The West Wing.

I loved Se7en, but give me four seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

Here is what someone else had to say on the subject:

Anyway, both have their own strengths. I would personally prefer comedy, and since I think it is generally more effectively designed for a TV format, I would say I prefer TV–I definitely spend a lot more time watching shows than movies simply because there is a lot more entertainment out there. And in the last decade general movie quality has been relatively weak, while TV quality has been outstanding. TV is kicking the crap out of film right now.

I think the general rule with lots of things–but with TV in particular–is that over time, things go to greater extremes. There isn’t as much on now that’s just kind of “meh”. Like things like Friends, or That 70’s Show where you’re like “this isn’t terrible, but ultimately…meh”. Most things now are either total dogs**t, or really damn good. And if you avoid the dogs**t, you’ll see what’s so great about a lot of TV now. It’s diverse (not stupid diverse–I mean real diversity–formats, styles, approaches), it’s smart, and it’s more boundless than ever. We are in a golden age of television. So as an over all question, it’s debatable. Right now, I think it’s definitely TV.

Good call. I love my TV dramas. Not CSI or ER or Law & Order. I’m talking long arches, the ones that take years to wrap up. The ones with twists out of left field, characters being killed off, stories that make you think and trigger emotion. The best movies can do that, but not all. The best dramas can invoke those thoughts dozens of times over the course their runs.

7 – Speaking of good drama, last night before I fell asleep I watched what is one of the greatest episodes of TV in the last ten years.

It’s the second to last episode of season 4 of The West Wing. It’s called Commencement.

Let me set the scene:

– The President’s daughter just graduated from Georgetown and she’s set to tour Europe with her lame French boyfriend for the summer
– They’re celebrating at a DC night club before they fly away
– The President, the NSA and the Joint Chiefs had a middle-eastern diplomat killed a year earlier because he had ties to a terrorist cell
– A reporter has figured it out and is now questioning the Press Secretary. Not wanting to call it, “That time we killed the brown dude”, they refer to it as the “Mudross Research Project”.
– Everything else isn’t exactly important for the sake of the following video (though it is fucking awesome when Mary Louise Parker asks, “Donna, are you in love with Josh”…all the more reason to watch the show!)

How it was done is something I don’t know if I’ll ever see on TV again. Everything about it was perfect. The soundtrack, the camera work, the dialogue, the shifting between characters…it was all awesome. When you see the reaction and then the closing credits, no joke, you’ll get chills.

I cut it up and dropped it on youtube:

8 – 12:18 am…

This one hurts. It isn’t the loss. It isn’t because I thought this one could have necessarily been ours. It’s not even because we stopped AD cold. It’s because Favre won it and he didn’t even have to work for it.

I would have to watch the game again, but it appeared as if the Packers were able to stop Peterson with their front seven, sometimes six. Give the line and the linebackers credit, they stayed true to their gaps and didn’t make many mistakes tackling.

But my god…the defensive playcalling on obvious passing downs. How, in the name of everything holy, can you only rush three against a guy that’s been in the league for nearly two decades. Give this guy time to throw and of course he’s going to pick you apart.

Yes, the DBs had some mental errors. But any defense is gonna give up big passing plays when the QB has time to bake a cake in the pocket. Favre never once in looked uncomfortable. It was rare that he was forced to give up the ball early. For fuck’s sake, if he’s picking you apart when you’re dropping eight, could it really hurt to rush five or six? Whatever happened to the exotic schemes we saw against Cutler? What we saw tonight was the Bob Sanders defense all over again, and it just leaves me feeling disgusted.

Second, not all the sacks were on the offensive line. That unit on the left side obviously didn’t play well, but Rodgers has got to learn to GET RID OF THE FUCKING BALL. The safety is entirely on him. So were at least three of the other sacks. Against line like that, he’s got to have that clock in his head ticking. 1, 2, 3, get rid of the ball or fucking run with it. Again, without watching it a second time I don’t know how much the play calling had to do with this. But if Rodgers doesn’t have an easy checkdown on every throw, namely to the TE, something is seriously wrong.

The Packers offense is obviously at its best when Rodgers can take a couple steps and deliver a quick strike. Make him roll out, maybe. But if he’s gotta take a 5 or 7 step drop he’s gonna get killed. The line can’t block that long and Rodgers holds the ball too often.

This game could have been different. Lee drops a TD that turns out to be a death sentence. Rodgers throws a terrible INT deep in their territory. The fumble.

This is a game that I think looks worse than it really was and it was for the eye popping plays. The sacks, the big strikes by Favre. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that the Packers ran the ball when they attempted it. Rodgers had a good completion percentage and yards per attempt. They stopped AD cold.

Despite the defensive scheme and the sacks, this game was still relatively close.

9 – Good turnout here, though.

I’m surprised we didn’t get complaints from the neighbors but it was a good time.

Getting the food and making it was a pain in the ass. Only now is it dawning on me that I paid $91 for food and drinks tonight. There are a lot of leftovers but unless I want to live at the gym this week I’m not sure how much I want to indulge on cream cheese, Mayo, beef, sour cream and Velveeta.

9b – I liked the compliments on got on my place. Everyone that came through mentioned how great it looked. Glad to know the hard work didn’t go unnoticed.

9c – Neither did the food. “Fucking amazing” was the term I most often heard.

Again there were SERIOUS trade-offs. Lots of tunes I wanted on here, but if they got over 4:30 in length I knew they would be costing a couple shorter songs their spots. In the end I wanted variety instead of the best of the best (which might have only been 8-10 songs).

The first two were the only absolute, stone cold locks. I knew I wanted Stairway and Hallelujah the moment I sat down to figure this out.

The rest is a mixed bag. Certainly not a representation of the best music ever, but then again I’m not an expert on music either. I’ve also got time restraints. Sorry Beethoven.

I tried to get a mix of genres.

– I chose Since U Been Gone over Billy Jean (pop)

– Welcome to the Jungle over Smells like Teen Spirit (honestly, time was the determining factor here)

– The Doors got in because of the instruments and the length of Break on Through.

– George and Patsy help out the country side.

– Warren and Eminem for hip-hop, thought I could have gone with EPMD or Mob Deep.

– Massive Attack, despite the length, had to be on there. Electronica, trippy, big time sound.

– I needed something punk. I thought Dead Kennedys but I don’t know if they have the influence. The Descendants do. They invented pop-punk. When you hear The Ataris, Green Day, Paramore, New Found Glory and countless other four-chord wonders singing about teenage years and lost love, thank The Descendants. Silly Girl works for this list.